Seagate’s latest "Constellation" hard drives have arrived in Australia
that boasts a small 2.5” Tier 2/nearline drive with the lowest
enterprise power usage. Coming in two distinct sizes that include 500GB
and 160GB, these drives are an industry first in terms of size,
operating power and speed. It should also be noted that Seagate offer two
physical drive sizes that include a 2.5” Constellation and a 3.5”
Constellation ES hard drive.

The best aspect of these
drives is the inclusion of PowerChoice that decreases power consumption
by up to 54% and considering that these drives have been designed to run
24x7, this is definitely a powerful selling point. This was backed up by
our tests and even though the drive was connected to our server, the
temperature of the unit was considerably quite lower than our other
drives.

The New Seagate Constellation

Key features and
benefits

Lowest operating
power & enhanced power options with PowerChoice™ for even greater
power savings during slow or idle periods

First 2.5", 15mm
business critical drive on the market designed for enterprise
reliability, vibration performance and high data integrity. Fits in
more server & storage slots!

Fastest Tier
2/Nearline HDD on the market (SAS @ 6Gb/s speed). At a system level
(with more drives) the performance will be >2x as compared to 3.5"
HDD.

The highest capacity
2.5" enterprise drive with 500GB with both SAS and SATA interfaces.
(160GB SATA also available for boot/entry server applications)

The installation process
of the Seagate Constellation was a breeze and without any hassles on our
test machine, the drive simply plugged into our SATA connection,
followed by the power.

I must admit that we were taken aback at the
physical size of the drive which measured at 14.8mm (height), 70mm
(width) and 100.5mm (length). Once installed onto our server machine,
our operating system automatically detected the drive and we began the
formatting process which was a relatively smooth and fast process. We
tested the drive on both a Windows and Linux server, including Windows
Vista 64-bit.

The New Seagate Constellation - Size
matters only with storage

When it comes to speed and performance, the Constellation is quite
powerful and the 2.5” inch drive boasts a 3 GBps SATA and new SAS 2.0
interface that has speeds of up to 6Gb/s. We tested this on our AMD
Phenom II machine and from our testing and benchmarking, the speeds were
extremely fast, whether this was booting up Windows Vista, copying large
files or accessing files on the hard drive, it was truly a flawless
experience. Best of all, the waiting times of loading programs such as
Adobe’s CS4 or 3DMAX was extremely fast.

Specifications

500 GB

Model Number

ST9500430SS

Interface

SAS 2.0 6.0Gb/s

Cache

16 MBytes

Capacity

500 GB

Areal density (avg)

283 Gbits/inch2

Guaranteed Sectors

976,773,168

PHYSICAL

Height (max)

14.8 mm (0.583 inches)

Width (max)

70 mm (2.76 inches)

Length (max)

100.5 mm (3.957 inches)

Weight (typical)

227 grams (0.50 pounds)

PERFORMANCE

Spindle Speed

7,200 rpm

Average latency

4.16 msec

Random read seek time

8.0 msec

Random write seek time

8.4 msec

RELIABILITY

MTBF

1,200,000 hours

Annual Failure Rate

0.73%

POWER

12V start max current

1.05 amps

5V start max current

0.80 amps

Although this drive has
been targeted for enterprise usage, Seagate also recommend this drive
for computer enthusiasts who wish for the ultimate computing
performance. For instance, users whose PC's are connected to broadband
or cable 24x7, even high-end gamers. Cost wise, the Seagate
Constellation can be purchased for around $499AUD depending on store and
availability.

At the end of the day, we could happily recommend this drive for a
variety of users and considering that the drive has been designed for
maximum usage, the 5-year warranty by Seagate is a godsend. Users of
servers will appreciate the size, performance and power features of the
Constellation that will not break the budget and is a worthy investment.